Captain Planet and the Planeteers is an animated TV series broadcast on TBS and in syndication from September 15, 1990, to December 5, 1992.
Gaia, the spirit of the planet, assembles a diverse team of "planeteers," who are able to combine their powers to summon an elemental warrior that takes on the appearance of superhero Captain Planet. He works with the planeteers to defend Earth from pollution caused by criminals and villains. As the show's theme song says, Captain Planet is "gonna take pollution down to zero" by defeating the villains, who include the likes of Hoggish Greedly, Dr. Blight and Looten Plunder. The animated series was co-created by media mogul Ted Turner, a noted environmentalist.
In 1990, The Los Angeles Times described the show as having "not much originality", although also saying that "there's a passion behind this series, which adapts a conventional super-hero formula to an unconventional theme", also stating that the celebrities voicing the series "also sets the series apart". The newspaper also described the show as being part of "the increased awareness of Earth as endangered". L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative activist, accused the show of "seeking to scare children into political activism", along with accusing the show of having "leftist slants"; Barbara Pyle responded, saying "I don't think 'Captain Planet' is scary ... it shows kids that every action counts ... I consider [environmental issues] bipartisan."
The Girl on a Motorcycle (French title La Motocyclette) is a 1968 British-French erotic romantic drama film directed by Jack Cardiff, starring Alain Delon and Marianne Faithfull. Released as Naked Under Leather it was the first film to receive an X rating in the United States, and edited by Warner Brothers for an "R" rating. It was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival but the festival was cancelled due to the May 1968 events in France.
The Girl on a Motorcycle redefined the leather jacket for motorcyclists into a catsuit that Faithfull wore in the film.
The Comic Strip are a group of British comedians who came to prominence in the 1980s. They are known for their television series The Comic Strip Presents..., which was labelled as a pioneering example of the alternative comedy scene.
1985:- England has been invaded by the Warsaw Pact countries and middle-class couple Hermine and Godfrey retreat to their rural hide-away but after witnessing a bunch of incompetent commandos kill each other, they get separated.
In keeping with the war theme of the episode, Hermine is reading a copy of The Sun from the time of the Falklands War. The headline "GOTCHA" was from 4 May 1982, about the sinking of the Argentine warship ARA General Belgrano.
With - Robbie Coltrane, Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French, Rik Mayall, Daniel Peacock, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson and Jennifer Saunders.
Ayahausca is a traditional plant medicine from the Amazon used to treat a variety of physical and psychology illnesses and conditions. This film explores the use of the Ayahausca as a holistic medicine, challenging stigmas around its use and helping people become more conscious and ethical consumers of the plant if that's the path they choose.
HUMAN's Musics - A film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand / Composed by Armand Amar
"I am deeply taken with traditional music, it moves me, it connects you to emotion.
The idea with HUMAN was to create songs that would reflect the same emotion generated by the interviews. I wanted things to open up, to open up one’s heart, to let the sadness be without any restraint. HUMAN has been one of these rare moments in my life as a film composer during which I could express all these different cultures at the same time : either working on minimalist songs or meeting with these singers and musicians coming from all around the world. Which note did I first produce ? I had more like a global vision in mind, an atmosphere that would merge into the film and that would bring people together, this was my starting point. The part I created for the Mongolian sequence might be the best summary of the atmosphere I wanted the film to have.
Yann has given me a particular role as a film composer that is very diffrent from the one other directors usually give me. There is a strong friendship between us, an intimate relationship. He’s generous. You follow him because of his fantastic instinct, I can advise on the artistic process being in a way the first audience."
Armand Amard, composer of the HUMAN music.
"Les musiques traditionnelles m’ont accaparé, elle me touchent, elles ont un rapport direct avec l’émotion. Pour HUMAN, mon idée était de construire une sorte de résonnance des interviews par un chant qui délivrerait la même émotion. J’avais envie que les choses s’ouvrent, que le cœur s’ouvre, que la tristesse s’ouvre, de ne pas avoir de retenue. HUMAN a été un des rares moments dans ma vie de compositeur de musiques de film, où j’ai pu exprimer toutes ces cultures différentes : être aussi bien dans des musiques minimalistes que dans des rencontres avec tous ces musiciens et chanteurs venus d’ailleurs. Quelle note m’est venue en premier ? C’était plus une vision globale, un univers en osmose avec le film, où il était question de partage et de rencontre, qui ont été mon point de départ. D’ailleurs, pour moi ma composition faite pour les images de la Mongolie résume particulièrement l’univers que j’ai voulu pour ce film.
Avec Yann, j’ai une place particulière en tant que compositeur, différente de celle que me donnent les autres réalisateurs. Entre lui et moi, il y a une amitié profonde, nos échanges sont complices. C’est quelqu’un de généreux. Son instinct assez fantastique fait qu’on arrive à le suivre, je peux me permettre de donner mon avis dans la construction du film, parce que je suis dans le fond, le premier public."
Armand Amar, compositeur de la musique de HUMAN.
The basis for the feature film "Hard Eight". The short begins with an older man (Hall) giving a younger man (Baltz) advice over cigarettes and coffee. The younger man tells how he won around $8,000 gambling. At a nearby table, a newlywed couple argues over losing money in Vegas playing craps. The husband lights his last cigarette before rethinking his marriage. Then a hitman (Ferrer) enters to buy cigarettes and coffee before hitting the road.
“Naked and Famous” is a surprisingly intimate and revealing portrait of Bristol’s self-taught maverick and musical genius. Proud of his ‘mongrel’ family, Adrian Thaws (aka Tricky) tells the story of his creative journey from a world of part-gypsy entertainers and mixed-race gangsters in the working-class suburb of Knowle West to acclaim as one of the most original musicians of his generation. A film about passion, instinct and the courage to be different.
Produced and directed by Mark Kidel
Assistant producer and Production Manager: Sophie Weitzman
British artist Vicki Bennett takes you on a roller coaster-ride with her art project People Like Us. In performances, videos, collages and music, her amazing editing techniques and sense of humor leave you flabbergasted and enthusiastic at the same time. People Like Us is like free-zone where appropriation meets alchemy, humor meets social critique and the boundless imagination meets reality (so called).
Blonde Cobra is a 1963 short film directed by experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs. Footage for the unique and at the time controversial film was shot by Bob Flieshner. Marc Siegel states that the 33-minute film is "generally considered to be one of the masterpieces of the New York underground film scene", and that it is a "fascinating audio-visual testament to the tragicomic performance of the inimitable Jack Smith", who was a photographer and filmmaker and "queer muse" in New York avant-garde art in the 1960s and 1970s.
The film captures Smith wearing dresses and makeup, playing with dolls, and smoking marijuana. Paul Arthur writes that the film contains "dizzying quasi-autobiographical rants" which spin on sadism, and that like Jacobs' Little Stabs at Happiness, it contains "languid improvisations studded with the bare bones of narrative incident or, more accurately, its collapse". The film contains Smith droning and singing and wildly cooing and cackling in parts of the film. The "lonely little boy" episode about a little boy living in a large house with 10 rooms has been cited as being "potentially repugnant to many viewers" because of its exploration of sadism against children and childhood sexuality. In this episode the narrator confesses to have "blown up the penis" of a 7-year-old boy with a match. The film contains numerous other elements which were shocking at the time of release such as references to necrophilia, the use of the word "cunt", the confession of a nun (impersonated in a posh high-pitched voice by Smith) to lesbianism, the holding of a giant would-be dildo, and a portrayal of transvestites. The film features quotes such as "Why shave when I can't think of a reason for living" and "life is a sad business", quoting Greta Garbo. "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" is then played, described as a "burlesque rendering" of Robert Siodmak's 1944 film Cobra Woman. The last scene captures Smith stabbing a man in the chest. Hilary Radner and Moya Luckett consider the film to be a camp portrayal of Rose Hobart.
"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum."
- George Nada
They Live is a 1988 American science fiction action horror film written and directed by John Carpenter, based on the 1963 short story "Eight O'Clock in the Morning" by Ray Nelson. Starring Roddy Piper, Keith David, and Meg Foster, the film follows an unnamed drifter who discovers through special sunglasses that the ruling class are aliens concealing their appearance and manipulating people to consume, breed, and conform to the status quo via subliminal messages in mass media.
The 2012 documentary film The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, presented by the Slovene philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek, begins with an analysis of They Live. Žižek uses the film's concept of wearing special sunglasses that reveal truth to explain his definition of ideology. Žižek states:
They Live is definitely one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood Left. … The sunglasses function like a critique of ideology. They allow you to see the real message beneath all the propaganda, glitz, posters and so on. … When you put the sunglasses on, you see the dictatorship in democracy, the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.
Mad Max 2 (released as The Road Warrior in the United States) is a 1981 Australian post-apocalyptic dystopian action film directed by George Miller. It is the second installment in the Mad Max franchise, with Mel Gibson reprising his role as "Mad" Max Rockatansky. The film's tale of a community of settlers moved to defend themselves against a roving band of marauders follows an archetypical "Western" frontier movie motif, as does Max's role as a hardened man whose decision to assist the settlers helps him rediscover his humanity. Filming took place in locations around Broken Hill, in the Outback of New South Wales.
The film was released on 24 December 1981 to widespread critical acclaim, with particular praise given to Gibson's performance, the musical score, cinematography, action sequences, costume design and sparing use of dialogue. It was also a box office success, and the film's post-apocalyptic and punk aesthetics helped popularise the genre in film and fiction writing. At the 10th Saturn Awards, the film won Best International Film and was nominated for five more awards: Best Director, Best Actor for Gibson, Best Supporting Actor for Bruce Spence, Best Writing, and Best Costumes for Norma Moriceau. Mad Max 2 is widely hailed as both one of the greatest action movies of all time and one of the greatest sequels ever made, and fan clubs for the film and "road warrior"-themed activities continue into the 21st century.
Preceded by Mad Max in 1979, the film was followed by Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985 and Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015.
Brion Gysin (19 January 1916 – 13 July 1986) was an english painter, sound poet, and writer of the Beat generation who lived right across Museum Pompidou, in Paris, when UK-Avantgarde artist and Industrial music founder Genesis P-Orridge visited his mentor.
Gysin is best known for his discovery of the 'Cut-up'-technique, used by his friend and collegue, the novelist William S. Burroughs. With the engineer Ian Sommerville Gysin invented the Dreamachine - a flicker device designed as an art object to be viewed with the eyes closed - as a proto-type of modern, electronic mind- or brain-machines.
In this raw documentary Genesis and Gysin talk about the alchemy of making a good tea, the rhizomatic character of their music and art … while listening to Throbbing Gristle and testing and filming the Dreamachine.
Source/Archive:
Genesis P-Orridge by courtesy of Boris Hiesserer (c) Pyromania Arts Foundation
Former actress Andriana clashes with her step-daughter Lisa over their inheritance. Lisa and her 'hippie' boyfriend plot to drive her insane with LSD. Will they be successful in this diabolical plot?
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent horror film that introduced the flesh-eating ghouls that would become synonymous with the term "zombie". The story follows seven people trapped in a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania, under assault by reanimated corpses. The movie was directed, photographed, and edited by George A. Romero, written by Romero and John Russo, and produced by Russell Streiner and Karl Hardman. It stars Duane Jones and Judith O'Dea.
Having gained experience creating television commercials, industrial films, and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood segments at their production company The Latent Image, Romero, Russo, and Streiner decided to make a feature film. They elected to make a horror film to capitalize on interest in the genre. Their script drew from Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend. Principal photography took place between July 1967 and January 1968, mainly on location in Evans City, Pennsylvania. Romero used guerrilla filmmaking techniques he had honed in his commercial and industrial work to complete the film on a budget of approximately US$100,000. Without the budget for a proper set, they rented a condemned farmhouse to destroy during the course of filming.
Night of the Living Dead premiered in Pittsburgh on October 1, 1968. It grossed US$12 million domestically and US$18 million internationally, earning more than 250 times its budget and making it one of the most profitable film productions ever made at the time. Released shortly before the adoption of the Motion Picture Association of America rating system, the film's explicit violence and gore were considered groundbreaking, leading to controversy and negative reviews. It eventually garnered a cult following and critical acclaim and has appeared on lists of the greatest and most influential films by such outlets as Empire, The New York Times, and Total Film. Frequently identified as a touchstone in the development of the horror genre, retrospective scholarly analysis has focused on its reflection of the social and cultural changes in the United States during the 1960s, with particular attention towards the casting of Jones, an African-American, in the leading role. In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Night of the Living Dead created a successful franchise that includes five sequels released between 1978 and 2009, all directed by Romero. Due to an error when titling the original film, it entered the public domain upon release,[9] resulting in numerous adaptations, remakes, and a lasting legacy in the horror genre. An official remake, written by Romero and directed by Tom Savini, was released in 1990.
Last Hippie Standing (2001) is a 45-minute documentary by the German filmmaker Marcus Robbin about Goa, India. The film compares the 1960s and 1970s hippie era with the situation in 2000.
The film has no commentary and consists of documentation of the ongoing party culture in Goa, as well as private and previously unreleased Super 8 footage from the 1960s and 1970s in Goa, filmed by Cleo Odzer. This material is the only existing contemporary film document of the hippie era in Goa. Furthermore, interviews with hippie veterans like Goa Gil, locals, and the former chief minister of Goa, Francisco Sardinha, describe the clashes that occur between the party culture and Indian conservatism. The last part of the documentary is shot at the Berlin Love Parade, where the protagonists reflect on their own spiritual development and the changes that have occurred since the hippie movement's advent.
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Assembled from unseen archive footage, rare offcuts and masses of hilarious junk-culture detail from the pre-punk '70s, this inspired collage is as much passionate social history as rockumentary. Intercutting a touching, never-before-seen Sid Vicious interview with contemporary quotes from the surviving Pistols -- wittily filmed, like renegade villains, in silhouette -- Temple exposes the band's human side as never before.
A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his armless mother--the leader of a strange religious cult--and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name as he becomes "her arms".
Morning of the Earth is a 1971 classic surf film by Alby Falzon and David Elfick.
The film's soundtrack was produced by G. Wayne Thomas and included music and songs by noted Australian music acts Tamam Shud, John J. Francis, Brian Cadd, Mike Rudd and G. Wayne Thomas. The record became the first Australian Gold soundtrack album. In October 2010, the soundtrack for Morning of the Earth (1971) was listed in the book, 100 Best Australian Albums.
The film portrays surfers living in spiritual harmony with nature, making their own boards (and homes) as they travelled in search of the perfect wave across Australia's north-east coast, Bali and Hawaii. The movie is regarded as one of the finest of its genre and noted as recording the first surfers to ride the waves at Uluwatu on the very southern tip of Bali and so bringing Bali to the attention of surfers around the world and so the beginnings of Bali as a major tourist destination.
Tony's out of jail. His mates think he's got the proceeds from the robbery and want it. Tony just wants to find Anna. He deals with one problem at a time. This is a road movie and a trip. Writer/director Esben Storm.
Music; John Martyn, Allan Stivell, AC/DC, Rose Tattoo.
Meet Rosaleen Norton, an artist and self-identified witch who the tabloids called “the witch of Kings Cross”. She was repeatedly arrested, had her artwork burned and was shunned and mocked by society.
Norton eked out a modest living selling her art, and putting spells and hexes on people. Norton, who lived in Kings Cross in the postwar years until her death in 1979, had been fascinated with the occult since she was a child.
Rosaleen Norton was an artist and self-identified witch who the tabloids called “the witch of Kings Cross”. She was repeatedly arrested, had her artwork burned and was shunned and mocked by society.
Norton eked out a modest living selling her art, and putting spells and hexes on people. Her story has been captured in a new documentary, released online on Tuesday.
Norton, who lived in Kings Cross in the postwar years until her death in 1979, had been fascinated with the occult since she was a child.
All her life, Norton combined her interest in the occult with art. Her paintings, some of which were seized by police and burned, could loosely be defined as esoteric: canvases often filled with hectic images of women embracing the Greek god Pan, snakes and horned demons.
Australia in the postwar years was almost 90% Christian, and Norton was made a target for her beliefs. Surveillance and raids from the vice squad, and seizure of her work, criminalised her, and turned her into a notorious and shocking tabloid figure. One of her sex magic partners, the celebrated Sydney Symphony Orchestra conductor Sir Eugene Goossens, was forced to flee Australia when his luggage at Sydney airport was found to contain pornography, masks and sex toys. The pair each suffered in their own way for transgressing the strict moral boundaries of the time.
Click on the image above for the 2020 biopic by Sonia Bible.
Dispute in Valladolid is a TV movie released in 1992 and directed by Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe, which is a fictionalized account of the real “Valladolid debate”.
The director was Jean-Danielle Veren, Jean-Pierre Marielle played Las Casas, and Jean-Louis Trintignant acted as Sepúlveda.
The Valladolid debate (1550–1551) was the first moral debate in European history to discuss the rights and treatment of an indigenous people by European colonizers. Held in the Colegio de San Gregorio, in the Spanish city of Valladolid, it was a moral and theological debate about the conquest of the Americas, its justification for the conversion to Catholicism, and more specifically about the relations between the European settlers and the natives of the New World. It consisted of a number of opposing views about the way natives were to be integrated into Spanish society, their conversion to Catholicism, and their rights.
Bishop of Chiapas Bartolomé de las Casas, argued that the Amerindians were free men in the natural order despite their practice of human sacrifices and other such customs, deserving the same consideration as the colonizers. Opposing this view were theologian Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who argued that the human sacrifice of innocents, cannibalism, and other such "crimes against nature" were unacceptable and should be suppressed by any means possible including war.
Delia Derbyshire: The Myths And Legendary Tapes is an experimental documentary about the composer, mathematician and Radiophonic Workshop pioneer. Directed by and starring Caroline Catz, the film traces Derbyshire's life and work through a combination of archive footage and dramatisation, interspersed with Cosey Fanni Tutti's new interpretations of Derbyshire's archive material (the 'Legendary Tapes' of the title).
This 10-part, 18-hour documentary series from directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick presents firsthand accounts of the Vietnam War from nearly 80 witnesses, including Americans who fought in the war and some who opposed it, as well as Vietnamese combatants and civilians from both sides. Digitally remastered archival footage, photographs, historic television broadcasts and home movies offer different perspectives on the conflict. Also providing insight are audio recordings from inside the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.
Under the 1954 Geneva peace accords, reunification elections were to be held in Vietnam within two years. Prime Minister Diem rejected the election promise and took excessive steps to repress any opponents. The strategic hamlets were not welcome by the peasant population and by 1964, supplies were flowing south along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Viet Cong guerrillas supported by the Army of North Vietnam attacked American installations in Saigon. The bombing of the North started in 1965 in reaction to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The Marines that began arriving in 1965 were not seen as liberators by the people. The North launched a major attack in 1965 on the airbase at Da Nang. It was eventually recognized that the bombing campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, had failed.
The campaign in Vietnam by the US comes across as being vast, expensive (in every respect) and doomed to fail. This was a colonial war fought by people who believed they were in a virtuous struggle, Meanwhile enormous resources were being used to annihilate entire populations. Torture, sabotage, incompetence and corruption supplied the supporting cast for this disaster.
Anti-war protests began early in the Johnson administration though the vast majority of Americans at the time supported the administration. The initial protests were led by civil rights activists, the old left, women's groups and the clergy. Religious organizations had a difficult time as they were conservative by nature. As well, college students could avoid the draft if they remained in school. Blacks were joining the military but activists decried those who claimed they were trying to save people of color. Passive resistance and draft card burning were increasing. The October 1967 march on the Pentagon was denounced as anti-American as were most protests against the war. However, 55,000 participated and over 600 were arrested. The climate soon began to change. Johnson had to raise taxes and the economy was doing poorly and by December 1967 a poll showed that a majority of Americans now thought the war was a mistake. Senator Eugene McCarthy became popular by proposing an end to the war. He nearly defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire primary and his success led to Bobby Kennedy's entry into the Presidential race. Martin Luther King spoke out against the war and riots broke out across the US after his assassination. The Chicago protests at the Democratic convention and the police response led to bloodshed on all sides. During the election, Nixon attacked Humphrey based on his support of Johnson's war policies. Every Thursday, the number of Americans killed in Vietnam was released to the media. Nixon won the election by a slim margin and the Vice President Spiro Agnew began attacking the media as biased. Soon however, the public learned of the massacre at My Lai and even Vietnam Veterans began protesting the war.
Dispatches is a British current affairs documentary programme on Channel 4, first broadcast on 30 October 1987. The programme covers issues about British society, politics, health, religion, international current affairs and the environment, and often features a mole inside organisations under journalistic investigation.
On the evening of February 19th, 1992 Dispatches featured a special episode about Satanic ritual abuse. Days later, newspapers reported that the video was misrepresented. The clips of the alleged abuse were drawn from First Transmissions (1982), an experimental video produced by Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (T.O.P.Y.) a geographically disperse occult collective committed to subverting mainstream media.
Presented by journalist Andrew Boyd, the Dispatches show promised to present, for the first time, the programmed claimed unequivocal evidence of Satanic abuse and ritual murder having been carried out in Britain. The show featured the testimony of an alleged survivor of Satanic abuse, 'Jennifer', and had been trailed heavily with reports in the broadsheet newspapers in the days leading up to broadcast. In particular, the show was able to shockingly broadcast clips of a tape that the British police had seized a decade earlier which, the programme makers claimed, was a home-video recording of a Satanic ritual killing. Over a hundred people called a helpline number advertised after the show ended.
Far from being a Satanic snuff movie, the video was quickly determined after broadcast to be performance art video by TOPY, an offshoot of a group of musicians and performers including Genesis P. Orridge's Throbbing Gristle and Psychick TV. Most shockingly of all, First Transmission had itself been funded by Channel 4.
The show was denounced in the media over the following days and weeks as a grotesque lapse of journalistic integrity. The programme stands as a particular testament to a moment in British social, cultural and criminal history at the height of the so-called 'Satanic Panic' which swept the USA as well as the UK in the 1980s. There is an extensive interdisciplinary literature on the programme and its associated impacts and phenomena, from historians, art historians, criminologists, psychologists and others. The overwhelming majority of commentary on Beyond Belief is critical of the programme.
A transcript of the broadcast has been shared online and there is considerable information about the programme to be found. The show itself, though, has never been repeated, and has never been made available online in full. The show has also proven difficult to access by professional researchers in archive holdings at Channel 4, or at the production company, Looktwice.
In November 2020, YouTube user 'RileyELFuk' made a 37 minute version of the show available on their channel which runs to the final credits. About 8 minutes of the 45 minute broadcast time (10:30pm - 11:15pm) are thus still missing. Comparing this upload with the transcript suggests that much of this time would have been taken up by advertisements before the show started, as only one page of the transcript, featuring the programme's introduction, are clipped from the film.
The role of computerised media in this program is interesting. It came out right at the cusp between the earlier cultural networks of mail and radio, clubs and cellars (to reference the site of satanic abuse) and the rise of the internet, where much of this culture exists today. Terrorism is even named as a source for the satanic abuse, in how its 'survivors' manifest PTSD. Computers feature in many of the interviews, often as a backdrop to interviewees appearing as 'experts' (never for the 'victims'). At the same time the psychological explanations for how 'victims' are effected by the 'abuse' is spoken of in terms of 'imprint', 'programming', 'memory', 'information' and so on. The allegations never come to any concrete point, with names of perpetrators, or even victims, apart from the anonymous 'witnesses' speaking on camera (considering one of the few 'witnesses' Jennifer, states in the programme she murdered her own child in a ritual sacrifice, it would not have been so difficult to check up on this). The visual media depicting the 'abuse' is seen as both evidence and the corrupting material that causes the apparent abuse. However, no origin of the material is even really established. Since it was colaged performance art, mostly featuring actors, this is understandable.
This program and what it represents is important because it shows us a time when many of the present-day folk devils and moral panics were finding their form, if not their content. Attempts to police this sort of media are still underway.
(First Transmission was a collection of video tapes that were made available through Psychic TV's mail order system in the early 80s. Fans of the band had to own all of the albums in order to qualify to be given the videos as a gift. Psychic TV and TOPY were a kind of cultural and cult pyramid scheme).
Living abroad and being a teacher, I often talk to people about the history of Australia. Many people find it hard to believe that in many ways Australia resembles South Africa in it's history and ideology regarding the Indigenous people of the continent. At the same time many people in Australia want to see change, and to see the crimes of history addressed. But many people in Australia also see the colonisation of the landmass as a 'civilising project'. The distance between these points is the reason why collective Australia is so often concerned with what it is to be 'Australian' and so much time, effort and money is spent in projecting out into the world a sort of composite image of 'Australia'. As recently as the 2023 FIFA women's world cup there were advertisements run to attract tourists to Australia which featured the same image that were being promoted in the 1980s (outback landscapes, marsupials, the beach and the Great Barrier Reef, the Opera House) in the tedious 'Come and Say G'day campaign'. If Australia as a culture could only articulate some of the complexities of the national story and history, I believe there could be massive change in how the society as a whole develops and many of the issues that are dividing the nation today would be incorporated into a larger understanding of national identity. One of the most difficult and important issues that needs to be incorporated into the nation is the ongoing history of genocide that is the story of Aboriginal survival. This film takes a bleak look at this horror
The adaption of the 1959 novel by William Burroughs by David Cronenberg.
The film sits between the novel and Burroughs biography. It captures the sentiment of Burroughs' writing well, but it does not reproduce the dark, chaotic and humorous qualities of the novel. For the dedicated Burroughs fan or curious novice, the film should be accompanied by the novel (I have read it 5 times and did my MA thesis on it), along with Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs by Ted Morgan. Combined you will get a good image of not just an intense and intricate series of narratives, but a heightened literary experience concerning one of the greatest English language novels of the 20th century.
"The whole human position is no longer tenable," announces a character early in William S. Burroughs' Cities Of The Red Night. The story that Burroughs' biographer Ted Morgan - whose previous subjects include Winston S. Churchill, W. Somerset Maugham and Franklin D. Roosevelt - tells in Literary Outlaw is that of someone who has spent an entire literary life attempting to reconcile a belief that human existence is unendurable with the knowledge that it is also inescapable, and whose literary life itself derives from the event which confirmed him in that belief. On the afternoon of September 6, 1951, William Seward Burroughs - alienated scion of the Midwestern upper-middle class, grandson of the inventor of the Burroughs adding machine, demimondain mentor to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, junkie, gun fetishist - was attempting to demonstrate the virtuosity of his marksmanship by doing a 'William Tell act', which involved shooting a glass balanced on the head of Joan Vollmer, his common-law wife and the mother of his five-year-old son, Willam Burroughs Jr. Burroughs père, being both drunk and stoned at the time, allowed his aim to slip, drilling Joan Burroughs through the forehead and killing her instantly. "I am forced to the appalling conclusion," Burroughs wrote almost three and a half decades later in the introduction to Queer (an autobiographical novel written in the early '50s but not published until 1985; and one of the most affecting tales of unrequited love in the English language), "that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death [which] maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out."
In 1953, exterminator William Lee finds that his wife Joan is stealing his supply of insecticide to use as a recreational drug. Lee is arrested by the police, and he begins hallucinating due to being exposed to the insecticide. Lee comes to believe that he is a secret agent, and his boss, a giant talking beetle, assigns him the mission of killing Joan, who is allegedly an agent of an organization called Interzone Incorporated. Lee dismisses the beetle's instructions and kills it. Lee returns home to find Joan having sex with Hank, one of his writer friends. Shortly afterwards, he accidentally kills her while attempting to shoot a drinking glass off her head to emulate William Tell.
Having inadvertently accomplished his mission, Lee flees to Interzone, located in a city somewhere in North Africa. He spends his time writing reports concerning his mission; these documents, at the insistence of his visiting literary colleagues, are eventually compiled into the titular book. While Lee is addicted to assorted mind-altering substances, his replacement typewriter, a Clark Nova, becomes a talking insect which tells him to find Dr. Benway by seducing Joan Frost, a doppelgänger of his dead wife. There is a row at gunpoint with Joan's husband Tom, after Lee steals his typewriter, which is then destroyed by the Clark Nova insect. Lee also encounters Yves Cloquet, who is apparently an attractive young gay Swiss gentleman. However, Lee later discovers that Yves is merely disguised as a human, and that his true form is a huge monstrous shapeshifting centipede.
After concluding that Dr. Benway is actually secretly masterminding a narcotics operation for a drug called "black meat" which is supposedly derived from the guts of giant Brazilian centipedes, Lee encounters Tom's housekeeper Fadela, previously observed to be an agent of the narcotics operation. Fadela reveals herself as Dr. Benway in disguise. After being recruited as a double agent for the black meat operation, Lee completes his report and flees Interzone to Annexia with Joan Frost. Stopped by the Annexian border patrol and instructed to prove that he is a writer as he claims, Lee produces a pen. When this proves insufficient for passage, Lee, now having realized that accidentally murdering his wife has driven him to become a writer, demonstrates his William Tell routine using a glass atop Joan Frost's head. He again misses, and thus re-enacts the earlier killing of his wife. The border guards cheerfully bid him welcome to Annexia, and his new life as a writer. Lee is shown shedding a tear at this bittersweet accomplishment.
Now, repeat after me: "Homosexuality is the best all-round cover an agent ever had."
Romantic Warriors IV: Krautrock is a trilogy of feature-length documentaries about progressive music written and directed by Adele Schmidt and José Zegarra Holder. RW4 focuses on the progressive rock music from Germany popularly known as Krautrock, although the integration of Krautrock into the progressive rock genre is a purely American notion. In Europe, the conventional wisdom is that Krautrock can be considered at most as the connection between psychedelic rock and progressive rock. The term "Krautrock" was applied after-the-fact by British journalists, and in fact the German bands share very few similarities.
Part 1 deals with bands from the Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Hamburg regions of Germany.
Part 2 focuses on bands from Munich, Wiesbaden, Ulm, and Heidelberg (including Guru Guru, Amon Düül II, Xhol Caravan, Embryo, Kraan, Popol Vuh, Witthüser & Westrupp).
Part 3 will focus on bands from Berlin and Hamburg (including Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Günter Schickert, Agitation Free, Conrad Schnitzler, A.R. & Machines, Nektar and some contemporary bands such as Robert Rich & Markus Reuter and Coolspring). Part 3 will be released in late 2023.
I Love You, Alice B. Toklas is a 1968 American romantic comedy film directed by Hy Averback and starring Peter Sellers. The film is set in the counterculture of the 1960s. The cast includes Joyce Van Patten, David Arkin, Jo Van Fleet, Leigh Taylor-Young (in her film debut) and a cameo by the script's co-writer Paul Mazursky. The title refers to writer Alice B. Toklas, whose 1954 autobiographical cookbook had a recipe for cannabis brownies. The film's eponymous theme song was performed by sunshine pop group Harpers Bizarre.
Attorney Harold Fine is cornered into setting a date for marriage by his secretary/fiancée, Joyce. Because of a fender bender, he ends up driving a hippie vehicle, a psychedelically painted station wagon. When taking his hippie brother, Herbie, to the funeral of his family's butcher he encounters Nancy, Herbie's girlfriend, an attractive, free-spirited, barefoot flower power lady. She takes a liking to Harold, and after they spend a night together in his home, makes him pot brownies. However, she departs without telling him about its special ingredient, and not knowing what they are he eats them and feeds them to his father, mother, and fiancée, who dissolve in laughter and silliness. Harold considers the "trip" a revelation, and begins renouncing aspects of his "straight" life. He leaves his fiancée at the chuppah moments before they are to be married, starts living with Nancy, and tries to find himself with the aid of a guru. Ultimately he discovers the hippie lifestyle is as unfulfilling and unsatisfying as his old lifestyle—Nancy says that monogamy "isn't hip"—and once more decides to marry Joyce. At the last minute, he again leaves her at the altar and runs out of the wedding onto a city street saying he doesn't know for sure what he is looking for but, "there's got to be something beautiful out there."
Roger Ebert found some of the movie "good and pretty close to the mark, and Sellers is very funny," he disliked the film's stereotyped view of hippiedom, concluding, "If they'd dropped Sellers into a real hippie culture, we might really have had a movie here."
This video shows a group of non-indigenous enthusiast didgeridoo players visiting Wugularr Community, Northern Territory, Australia. They watch coroborree and make didgeridoos, whilst absorbing the culture and traditions from which the ancient instrument comes.
Features David Blanasi and The White Cockatoo Performing Group - Aboriginal Culture / Didjeridu Tour 2001. Feat: David Blanasi, Tom Kelly. Darryl Dikarrna, Jack Nawalill, Norman, Frank.
"Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are warned that this film may contain images of deceased people"
Baba Rampuri, an American expatriate, has lived in India since 1970, when be became the first foreigner to be initiated into India's most ancient order of yogis and shamans, the Naga Sannyasis.
He is now a guru with a number of disciples within the order.
During his long discipleship in this mystical and sometimes dangerous world, he received traditional teachings in sacred speech, mantra, tantra, ayurveda, logic, ritual, and, encompassing all the above, the way of the yogi in the Yoga Tradition. Baba says, "Your tool of knowledge is Speech, because its boundaries establish the possibilities of the world."
Imagine 5000 people being taken across London by underground to a mystery location and then transforming a motorway into a sand pit, a dance floor, a forest. Imagine radical ecologists joining forces with sacked dockers and occupying Liverpool docks. Imagine Trafalgar Square metamorphosed into London's largest rave while under siege from 3000 unhappy riot police. Stop imagining and watc
h this film. YOU WILL BE INSPIRED.
May 1995, London, England. A small group of people decide to organise an illegal street party in Camden, a part of the city renowned for its consumerism and incessant traffic. The final location is kept secret, because they know that the state and business will not be amused. Reclaim the Streets! is born, a cocktail of raging love, revolutionary carnival, art and anarchy. Since then the clandestine street parties have erupted all over the world. From Hull to Sydney, Lyon to Tel Aviv, Vancouver to Valencia, people are taking back their streets. And this is only the beginning.
This film, a 2012 re-edit of the original, made from over a hundred hours of footage from 13 film-makers, and brought up to date with a recent expose of cop infiltration, tells the story of reclaim the Streets from its origins in London to the Global Street Party in May 1998 when 30 cities simultaneously joined in the fun.
'Ultimately it is in the streets that power must be dissolved: for the streets where daily life is endured, suffered and eroded, and where power is confronted and fought, must be turned into the domain where daily life is enjoyed, created and nourished.'
Wag the Dog is a 1997 American political satire black comedy film produced and directed by Barry Levinson and starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro.
The film centers on a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer who fabricate a war in Albania to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal. The screenplay by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet was loosely adapted from Larry Beinhart's 1993 novel, American Hero.
Wag the Dog was released one month before the outbreak of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal and the subsequent bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan by the Clinton administration in August 1998, which prompted the media to draw comparisons between the film and reality. The comparison was also made in December 1998 when the administration initiated a bombing campaign of Iraq during Clinton's impeachment trial over the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal. It was made again in the spring of 1999 when the administration intervened in the Kosovo War and initiated a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, which coincidentally bordered Albania and contained ethnic Albanians.
The film grossed $64.3 million on a $15 million budget and was well received by critics, who praised the direction, performances, themes, and humor. Hoffman received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance and screenwriters David Mamet and Hilary Henkin were both nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
This documentary is about the history of the Amsterdam squatters between 1975 and 1988. 28 former activist tell the story of the movement which caused considerable turmoil in the Netherlands. The film is made by Joost Seelen and Eric Duivenvoorden. It was nominated for the Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam in 1996.
ADM was a squat in the Port of Amsterdam, to the west of the city next to the North Sea Canal. The squat lasted from 1997 until its eviction in early 2019. Around 130 people lived on the terrain of 45 hectares in buildings, on boats and in vehicles. Local Amsterdam television station AT5 produced a six part series on ADM called the Lost Free State (De Verloren Vrijstaat) in 2018. This the series combined into a single program with subtitles in English. Squatting never died!
Follow the link to the film.
From the ancient Mongol siber, Siberia means “the wonderful and pure earth”. It is a country of marvels, with great mountainous chains, golden hills and powerful rivers; it was like this at the time when the first explorers saw it, in the XVII century. It has stayed the same even now when we have ‘rediscovered’ it in our backward journey in search of Siberian shamanism: a kaleidoscope of peoples, ethnicities, religions and traditions.
We wanted to lift the veil on this remote world, after seventy years of state-atheism, in order to understand whether this very ancient tradition had been able to survive the horrors of the Stalinist Regime. We travelled in the Transiberian, we trusted run-down buses, we crossed rivers on improvised barges, trying to sustain the rebirth process of ancient shamanic traditions. We helped the shamans revive and bring to light rites and ceremonies dedicated to the Master Spirits of these savage lands and we lived with them, gathering around the Sacred Fire, sharing the cold of the yurta and the magic of their shamanic chants.
During these seven years of life together, we have collected the secrets of their magic arts and their spiritual testament: to respect Father Sky and Mother Earth.
The Notorious Bettie Page is a 2005 American biographical drama film directed by Mary Harron. The screenplay by Harron and Guinevere Turner focuses on 1950s pinup and bondage model Bettie Page, portrayed by Gretchen Mol.
Bettie Page is an ambitious, naïve, and devout young Christian woman who longs to leave Nashville, Tennessee, following a childhood of sexual abuse, a failed wartime marriage, and a gang rape. In 1949, she departs for New York City, where she enrolls in an acting class. Amateur photographer Jerry Tibbs discovers her walking on the beach at Coney Island and she agrees to model for him. He suggests she restyle her hair with the bangs that would become her trademark.
Bettie becomes a favorite of nature photographers (including Bunny Yeager, who films her posing with two leopards), and she has no hesitation about removing her clothes for the photographers when asked. Before long images of the shapely brunette reach brother-and-sister entrepreneurs Paula and Irving Klaw, who run a respectable business selling movie stills and memorabilia, but also deal with fetish photos, magazines, and 8- and 16-millimeter films for additional income. Their top model Maxie takes Bettie under her wing, and she soon finds herself wearing leather corsets and thigh-high boots while wielding whips and chains for photographer John Willie, frequently at the request of Little John, a mild-mannered attorney with unusual tastes. Bettie is innocently unaware of the sexual nature of the images that rapidly are making her a star in the underground world of bondage aficionados.
In 1955, Bettie is called to testify before a hearing, headed by Senator Estes Kefauver, investigating the effects of pornography on American youth. Though she waits patiently for 12 hours to answer the committee's questions, Kefauver, for reasons unknown, decides to not bring her before the committee and dismisses her without an explanation. When it becomes apparent that casting directors are more interested in her notoriety than in any acting talent she might possess, Bettie heads to Miami Beach. Drifting along with limited career prospects and a virtually nonexistent social life, she stumbles upon a small evangelical church, walks inside and rushes forward to embrace Jesus Christ during the altar call. Although she insists she is not ashamed of anything she has done in her life, she appears happy to leave her past behind and return to her spiritual roots by preaching the word of the Lord on street corners.
In New York, Irving is highly stressed and suffering from poor health. He decides that he and his sister must burn their vast collection of erotic photos and movie footage to avoid potential prosecution. Paula reluctantly complies with her brother's request, but secretly saves the negatives of many of Bettie's pictures and movies from the bonfire, thereby ensuring that Bettie's work will survive for future generations.
Click on the image above for the full film.
In honour of the life, which ended today, of Barry Humphries I post here The Naked Bunyip.
The Naked Bunyip is a 1970 Australian documentary film directed by John B. Murray. The film explores sex in Australia using a fictional framework. A shy young man is hired by an ad agency to conduct a survey on sex in Australia. The somewhat clueless young man investigates homosexuality, transvestites, prostitution, and strip clubs along with every other variant on the "norm". While doing his interviews he meets celebrities, self proclaimed sex experts, prostitutes, female impersonators, pop stars, actors, and legislators as well as self appointed moral guardians.
The Naked Bunyip is a sex documentary and a blend of fact and fiction; "[it] incorporates the fictionalizing of the 'real' that had been a feature of tendencies in French 'new wave' and the American avant-garde narrative cinema." Graeme Blundell plays a shy young man who works for an ad agency, and the agency hires him to survey about sex in Australia. The film consists of "unrehearsed and unscripted" interviews as Blundell's character investigates a variety of sexual experiences, all except for the "normal" heterosexual experience.
Among the people interviewed are Dame Edna Everage, Jacki Weaver, Aggy Read, Harry M. Miller, and Russell Morris.
The Commonwealth censors insisted on five minutes of footage being removed but the producers refused, simply blacking out the offending images and bleeping the soundtrack. On the black footage, Murray inserted a picture of a bunyip performing a parody of the forbidden action. Murray also previewed the film without cuts to censors, angering the censor. This led to a debate about censorship which helped lead to a reform of censorship standards
Gnawa: Music and Beyond. Jacques Willemont, dir.; Viviana Pâques, scientific direction. Produced by Espaces, 2012; DVD includes English and French versions, both have Arabic with English or French subtitles; color, 58 mins.
Jacques Willemont's documentary Gnawa: Music and Beyond explores the history, symbolism and ritual practice of Morocco's Gnawa traditions. The Gnawa are a population brought to Morocco from West Africa through a history of trans-Saharan slavery. In some ways mirroring syncretic traditions that grew out of trans-Atlantic slavery, like santaría in Cuba or condomblé in Brazil, the Gnawa fused West African religious and musical practices with Islam to create a musically-driven sacred healing ceremony called a derdba. Following an animal sacrifice, this all-night event moves through a series of spirits who possess adepts through trance. Willemont and his team draw upon years of interview footage to explore both how this ritual works and what its various components mean. To this end, the film relies heavily on interviews and analysis by Viviana Pâques, a French scholar of Gnawa music who provided scientific direction for the production. The film aims to demonstrate what can be a clandestine practice in Morocco by sharing a wealth of footage from these interviews with Pâques (who passed away in 2007) and from a recorded ceremony.
Structurally, Gnawa: Music and Beyond is built around the Gnawa ceremony as it has existed in Morocco for generations. To do so, the film layers three central types of content. Interview material with Al Ayachi, a ritual leader called a moqqadem, sits between documentary footage and interviews with Viviana Pâques, who presents an interpretive analysis based on her three decades of work with Al Ayachi and the Gnawa. Partly because of this structural choice, the film presents dual focal points: it aims to preserve and share the secret knowledge held within Gnawa ritual practice while it presents the importance of deep interpretive symbolism as studied by anthropologists like Pâques. She has been a central figure within the study of Gnawa music and ritual, most notably through her two books on the topic, L'arbre cosmique dans la pensée populaire et dans la vie quotidienne du nord-ouest africain (The cosmic tree in Northwest African popular thought and daily life [1964]), and La religion des esclaves: Recherches sur la confrérie marocaine des Gnawa (The religion of slaves: research on the Moroccan brotherhood of the Gnawa [1991]).
In the immense conglomerate of African fusions which we can explore today we find a wholly unique case: the Gnawa. The approach to the Gnawa’s musical expression, of profound social and religious implications, reveals to us not only an extremely rich cultural heritage but also one of the chapters that would have greatest effect on the development of North African societies during the last 500 years: slavery.
The term Gnawa refers to the brotherhood groupings (and, by extension, to their manifestations) of a minority ethnic-religious group of sub-Saharan origin but with an important presence especially in Morocco and, to a lesser extent, in Algeria and Tunisia, where they are known as Diwan and Stambali respectively. There is no unanimity on seeing the Gnawiya as a Tariqa or Sufi religious path in the way that some of those more rooted in the Maghreb can be, such as the Qadiriya, Issawiya or Hamdushiya, among others, with which, however, it shares an organisational structure and ecstatic and possession rites, in what are considered the limits of Islamic orthodoxy. The establishing of these syncretic expressions took place over several centuries, during which the animist ritual substrate gradually adapted to Islam, with variations which depended both on the geographic area and the social environment to which the different black communities had to adapt themselves.
The Origins
The origin of the Gnawa, a word that seems to come from the Berber term agnaw/ignawen (dumb) in reference to their ignorance of Arabic and Berber must first be found in the diverse contingents of black slaves who between the 11th and 13th centuries were taken to the Maghreb strip from the Kingdom of Abyssinia, which occupied a strategic position in the caravanserai routes, and from the old Kingdom of Ghana (which today is part of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso and Senegal). The traditional slave trade from the great Sudan intensified because of the conquest at the end of the 16th century of part of the Songhai Empire carried out by the Sultan of Morocco Ahmed Al-Mansur, a trafficking that continued until the early 20th century.
The descendants of these slaves, together with other free emigrant black peoples who arrived through the caravanserai routes, mixed with the local population and formed a group that despite its diverse origin acquired its own identity thanks to the figure of Sidi Bilal, the first slave of Ethiopian origin freed by Mohammed and who was the first Muezzin of Islam. These communities would also be known by other names in reference to their geographical origin (Sudani, Bambara), their social status (Ousfan, slaves), their religious affiliations (Bilali) or some of their practices of origin (Bori, in reference to the dance of possession practised by the Hausa taken to Tripoli). The large concentration of the black community in cities such as Marrakech and Essaouira (formerly called the port of Timbuktu) was because both cities had been important slave markets connected to the trans-Saharan route.
"Now that world has passed. It's a question of people knowing more about things. Everything has been discovered in a way, or at least priced. So one is not really interesting, or the greater world is not interested in you and what you are discovering. I am sorry. But I am sure that somewhere there is something that will once again set my heart on fire again. I don't doubt it." - Martin Stone (musician and book dealer)
A Channel 4 documentary on the now lost world of second hand book dealers and runners, the criminal underworld and counter culture in London. Interestingly it features a young Alan Moore, the occult graphic novelist (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Promethea etc.) as he searches of a mysterious book that "connects everything.... the key to the city". Even the legendary Brian Caitlin makes an appearance (adding gravitas to the whole thing).
Former aristo turned crime writer Robin Cook (aka Derek Raymond) sets the tone ('All life is ultimately about death. It's what I call the general contract') while Michael Moorcock ('Moorcock schmoorcock,' mutters a Charing Cross Road dealer) casts doubt on Driffield's claim that a pulp novel, The Cardinal and the Corpse by Stephen Blakesley, is actually the work of Flann O'Brien. Petit and Sinclair's film is a deliberately jarring, oddly engaging rogues' gallery that even makes room for Tony Lambrianou, a former associate of the Krays ('I don't like the word gangster: I feel embarrassed when people use that word')."
Runaways, punks and outcasts calling themselves The Rejects group together in an abandoned house just outside of town. It explores many things people would assume to be covered in this kind of film.
Cast consists of real punks and Flea from RHCP. Also live performances by TSOL, D. I. and the Vandals.
A 2001 Australian comedy-drama film directed by Richard Lowenstein and starring Noah Taylor. The film draws on the 1994 memoir of the same name and consists of a series of vignettes from a young man's experience of sharing accommodation with a variety of characters.
"The True Story of Artaud le Mômo", by Gérard Mordillat and Jérôme Prieur, produced in 1993. Attendees: Luciane Abiet, Jacqueline Adamov, André Berne-Joffroy, Annie Besnard-Faure, Gustav Bolin, Denise Colomb , Pierre Courtens, Alain Gheerbrant, Alfred Kern, Gervais Marchal, Domnine Milliex, Minouche Pastier, Henri Pichette, Marcel Piffret, Rolande Prevel, Marthe Robert, Jany Seiden de Ruy, Paule Thévenin and Henri Thomas.
Note:
Poet, man of the theatre, actor, Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) is the author of an immense body of work among which is The Theater and its Double, The Voyage to the land of the Tarahumaras, Van Gogh the suicide of society, Artaud the Mômo... On May 26, 1946, after nine years of internment in various asylums and finally at the Rodez hospice, Antonin Artaud returned to Paris, welcomed at the Gare d' Austerlitz by his friends Henri and Colette Thomas, Jean Dubuffet and Marthe Robert... Arthur Adamov and Marthe Robert having guaranteed his material life, he will now live at the Maison de Santé in Ivry, under the authority of Dr. Delmas who will provide him with a pavilion and will leave him completely free of his time and his movements. We want to revisit the friends of Antonin Artaud, his loves, his companions the path he took, to find in their memory the places he frequented, to redo his journey between the clinic of Ivry and Saint-Germain-des- Prés, in the Paris of the immediate post-war period. That is to say that we want to find the voice of Artaud, his face, his presence, in the voice, the face, the presence of those who accompanied him, and whose life he changed: Paule Thévenin, Henri Thomas, Marthe Robert, Anie Besnard, Jany de Ruy, Rolande Prevel, Henri Pichette...
The Last Wave (also released in the United States as Black Rain) is a 1977 Australian mystery drama film directed by Peter Weir. It is about a white solicitor in Sydney whose seemingly normal life is disrupted after he takes on a murder case and discovers that he shares a strange, mystical connection with the small group of local Aboriginal people accused of the crime.
Click on the image above to watch the full film.
La Commune. Directed By Peter Watkins (5hrs 46mins). La Commune is Watkins’s anarchist masterpiece. He made it in 13 days in an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Paris, with a cast of more than 200 participants who re-created the six-week experiment in socialist self-government of 1871. In this war drama blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, the working class and the bourgeoisie of 19th century Paris are interviewed and covered on television, before and during a working class revolt. Most came to the project as activists, not actors, with a pre-commitment to Watkins’s own utopianism and his desire to bring contemporary capitalist society and media to account.
EXPOSED! The Weird Rites of the Hippies. All About the rebellious ones. How they live, love and die in their wild, wild world! Revolution is a documentary film by Jack O'Connell made in San Francisco in 1967. It was subsequently revived with added reminiscences.
Although most interviewees are not named some of them have been identified, such as Kurt Hirschhorn, Frank Jordan, Cecil Williams and Herb Caen. Daria Halprin appears in the film as herself. Also appearing in the film are the Ace of Cups, Country Joe and the Fish, and Dan Hicks.
The soundtrack album features Steve Miller Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Mother Earth who also appear in the film. It was released in 1968 by United Artists Records (UAS 5185) and produced by Ben Shapiro.
Jack O'Connell also made Village Sunday in 1960, which is a short documentary about the bohemian scene in Greenwich Village.
Filmed during the Grateful Dead's 1994 summer tour, this film chronicles the lives of the "Deadheads"-- free-spirited fans who follow the band around the country.
Bedazzled is a 1967 British comedy DeLuxe Color film directed and produced by Stanley Donen in Panavision format. It was written by comedian Peter Cook and starred both Cook and his comedy partner Dudley Moore. It is a comic retelling of the Faust legend, set in the Swinging London of the 1960s. The Devil (Cook) offers an unhappy young man (Moore) seven wishes in return for his soul, but twists the spirit of the wishes to frustrate the man's hopes.
In 1973, a Symposium Tribute to Jack Kerouac took place at Salem State College where beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky, and more discussed Kerouac’s writing and different aspects of his life. The three videos here show over 4 hours of the proceedings. The discussion is lively. The opening address is byCharles Jarvis. Jarvis, a professor at UMASS Lowell, reads an excerpt from "On the Road" to begin the Jack Kerouac Symposium. Jarvis had known Kerouac during the time when Kerouac moved back to Lowell from 1966-1968. He wrote a book about Kerouac called "Visions of Kerouac." Jay McHale, English professor at Salem State, was the organizer of the Jack Kerouac Symposium.
Discussion includes the sex life of Kerouac from the perspectives of the panelists, several of whom knew Kerouac intimately. Gregory Corso is a strong presence in the room, constantly interjecting and recasting the discussion according to his own particular perspective. However, Coros is also a giften poet and a sharp mind and many of this statements are profound and authentic. Corso never lost his 'beat' identity throughout is life.
"A Tribute to Jack Kerouac" was held as part of the Arts Festival at Salem State College in 1973. It is generally thought to be the first academic symposium on the life and work of Jack Kerouac. April 4th featured readings by Beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso and a showing of the film "Pull My Daisy." On April 5th a panel discussion featuring Ginsberg, Corso, John Clellon Holmes, and Peter Orlovsky was held. The Symposium was free-wheeling, as befit the times, and became legendary over the years as the Beat Writers gained in popularity. There are many photos from the symposium archived by Salem State University and can be seen here. I have selected some to add to this post.
Corso during the poetry reading on April 4th,1973.
Corso takes a photo of the audience on April 4th,1973.
Corso during the poetry reading on April 4th,1973.
Corso during the panel discussion on April 4th,1973.
Corso during the panel discussion on April 4th,1973.
Corso during the panel discussion on April 4th,1973.
Corso during the panel discussion on April 4th,1973.
Corso during at the panel discussion on April 4th,1973.
Corso during the poetry reading on April 4th,1973.
Corso during the poetry reading on April 4th,1973.
Corso during the poetry reading on April 4th,1973.
Allen Ginsberg speaking at the panel discussion during the Jack Kerouac Symposium on April 5, 1973.
Ginsberg with an audience member at the Jack Kerouac Symposium
Writer Aaron Latham (October 3, 1943 – July 23, 2022), a member of the panel discussion, was working on a biography of Kerouac at the time of the Symposium. he never completed the book.
Peter Orlovsky at the Jack Kerouac Symposium. Orlovsky was born on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1933. He was a Korean War Veteran and American poet, as well as Allen Ginsberg's partner.
Peter Orlovsky at the Jack Kerouac Symposium.
Peter Orlovsky at the Jack Kerouac Symposium.
Peter Orlovsky at the Jack Kerouac Symposium.
Stanley Twardowicz, a painter and photographer who participated in the Symposium's panel discussion on 4/5/1973.
Stanley Twardowicz (July 8, 1917 - June 12, 2008) was an American abstract painter and photographer. Twardowicz was born in Detroit, and studied at the Meinzinger Art School during World War II. During the 1950s and 1960s he developed his painting style, related to color field paintings and abstract expressionism. In 1971 he married artist Lillian Dodson. Twardowicz also befriended Jack Kerouac, and published some of the only images of the writer in his final years.
Larry Eigner, Allen Ginsberg, and Peter Orlovsky
Eigner, Ginsberg, and Orlovsky speaking during the poetry reading on April 4th, 1973
John Holmes, Shirley Holmes, Brian Joyce, Michael Antonakes, Marvin LaHood, and Allen Ginsberg
Having a meal before the Tribute to Jack Kerouac on April 5th,1973.
Allen Ginsberg speaking at the panel discussion during the Jack Kerouac Symposium on April 5, 1973.
Allen had broken his leg, after falling on icey ground at his Cherry Valley farm in Upstate New York during the winter
Lillian Dodson, John Holmes, Allen Ginsberg and Shirley Holmes
Having brunch before the Kerouac Symposium on April 5th,1973.
Scotty Beaulieu
Beaulieu, a friend of Kerouac's from Lowell, asks a question during the Symposium while in the audience on April 5th, 1973.
Beat poet Gregory Corso speaking with two neighborhood children. Corso was in Salem participating in Salem State College's "Tribute to Jack Kerouac."
